


A slash of blue

by middlemarch



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Questions, Romance, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-23 01:04:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11978859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: The party was at 8, black tie optional.





	A slash of blue

“Can I watch?” Jake asked. One minute, he’d been rambling about the merits of deep-fried Snickers vs. Oreos, and then, without any preamble, he’d launched his question and then literally taken a sort of scuttling step back, as if there were a live grenade in the room.

Amy paused. There were a lot of times she had wished Jake would ask such a question—when she was doing her taxes, state first, of course, or when she was making a big batch of estrellita sopita, freezing half of it for the next time she got a case of bronchitis-turned-walking-pneumonia. When she sewed a button back on his uniform jacket, wearing her grandmother’s thimble (Jake had been more fascinated by the thimble than anything else, muttering “I didn’t think it was a real thing, I thought it was a made-up word like ‘spelunker,’” and she’d had to explain that spelunker was also a real word) or when a rare, likely lost vesper sparrow showed up at the bird-feeder she had MacGyvered right outside the small window in her small kitchen. When she sorted the laundry into lights and darks and heavy-duty. When she binge-watched Sister Wendy’s Pains of Glass.

She hadn’t imagined he’d ever ask the question when he did and that she would not simply say No, get out, are you kidding me. She thought it might make them a little late, eating into the buffer she always left to account for some new Jake-nonsense, but she couldn’t help herself. She picked up the brush and dragged it through the powder, held it aloft as she spoke.

“Yes, but you can’t ask me a million questions. I need to concentrate,” she said, touching the pointed brush to her eyelid, where she’d already painted the liner in a heavy cat’s eye. The rest of her “evening” cosmetics were spread out in front of her, shadow and blush, foundation, concealer, the three precious, expensive Chanel lipsticks, Maybelline mascara, the case that held it all. She glanced at Jake and saw his eyes were dark, curious, as fascinated as if she were a triple murder in a locked room.

“I won’t bother you,” he replied. She’d see about that, she didn’t think it was going to be the case, but sometimes, it was good to be bothered by Jake. She wouldn’t tell him that though, just flicked her hair back again and peered into the mirror, seeing her own face, seeing his in the reflection, growing closer.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Emily Dickinson, whom I'm sure Jake has never heard of. Amy wrote a 10 page paper in college about Dickinson and would be obscurely horrified to see it used as a title. You can decide just how late they were for the party...
> 
> Re: Sister Wendy: Wendy Beckett (born 25 February 1930), better known as Sister Wendy, is a British hermit, consecrated virgin, and art historian who became well known internationally during the 1990s when she presented a series of documentaries for the BBC on the history of art. Her programmes, such as Sister Wendy's Odyssey and Sister Wendy's Grand Tour, often drew a 25 percent share of the British viewing audience. In 1997, Sister Wendy made her U.S. debut on public television and that same year The New York Times described her as "a sometime hermit who is fast on her way to becoming the most unlikely and famous art critic in the history of television." As of 2016, segments of these shows are still being aired on some PBS channels in the U.S.


End file.
